A letter looks like number 3. What is it?

Question

I came across this symbol (the one looks like 3) when I read a book this afternoon. I never saw such a symbol before. Is it a Greek letter? What is its LaTeX code?

Looks like the cyrillic zemlja (the equivalent of the Z for the Latin alphabet). — Bernard, Jul 05 '17 at 23:44
@PaulGaborit Yes, I did. Detexify doesn't give the right one. — jwyao, Jul 05 '17 at 23:45
@ShreevatsaR No. The symbol is a representation of a distribution. — jwyao, Jul 05 '17 at 23:46
@HenriMenke I guess so. But do you know the code for it? I tried some possible solutions, but they didn't work. — jwyao, Jul 05 '17 at 23:56
@Bernard I think so. It looks like the one I want. Do you know the code for it? — jwyao, Jul 05 '17 at 23:57
@barbarabeeton Thank you! There is a very subtle difference between them. I am using it for now. Your code is the simplest one that works in my LaTeX file :) — jwyao, Jul 06 '17 at 01:42

score 33 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 06 '17 at 01:45

33

It is \mathfrak{Z} from the STIX font.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{stix}
\begin{document}

$\sqrt{n} ( \mathscr{K}_n - \mathscr{K} ) \xrightarrow{d} \mathfrak{Z}$

\end{document}

answered Jul 06 '17 at 01:45

Henri Menke

109,596

barbara beeton · Answer 2 · 2017-07-06T12:10:00.877

19

this is almost certainly a fraktur Z -- $\frak{Z}$ .

while the letter does look quite like the cyrillic Ze, in western math there is a very long history of using the fraktur alphabet, but the only "common" cyrillic letter i know of that has made its way into western math is the Sha (first letter of the name shafarevich, and also used for the shuffle product).

edited Jul 06 '17 at 12:10

answered Jul 06 '17 at 01:50

barbara beeton

88,848

1

\frak_Z+ should be \frak{Z}, I presume. – Henri Menke Jul 06 '17 at 02:40
Also, why is there so little space between ) and \xrightarrow in my answer? – Henri Menke Jul 06 '17 at 02:42
@HenriMenke -- thanks for noticing typo -- fixed. (could have sworn i checked that, but machines here have been behaving unpredictably for the past week.) regarding bad spacing in your answer re stix font, there are still a lot of niceties that have to be sorted out there. i'll put that on our list. – barbara beeton Jul 06 '17 at 12:13
@HenriMenke -- on testing your example here, the bad positioning of the arrow is confirmed, but only with stix 1; stix 2 isn't yet fully available, but i will test this when it is. (so i have a different question -- how did whoever created the example shown in the original question get it right?) – barbara beeton Jul 06 '17 at 12:43
If one examines over a wide range of Fraktur fonts, many of them share this characteristic shape, including the fork of the central stroke, and the curly tail. Good sleuthing. – Steven B. Segletes Jul 06 '17 at 12:53
1

@StevenB.Segletes -- no need to sleuth, actually. i learned to read fraktur in my childhood. didn't learn to read cyrillic until i was in college. so for me, this was a no-brainer. – barbara beeton Jul 06 '17 at 13:30
At my age, just to recall something I heard last week, I often have to sleuth my brain. Sometimes, a cup of hot, steaming covfefe will help – Steven B. Segletes Jul 06 '17 at 13:45

A letter looks like number 3. What is it?

2 Answers2